The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others is so powerful! It is a really beautiful, haunting thriller that takes place in East Germany several years before the wall came down. It is about a Stasi agent who is spying on a writer and becomes empathic towards the writer and his lover. The Stasi agent is a very lonely uptight character, and watching him listen in on the lives of the artists and writers is so moving, like in The Conversation. It becomes incredibly tense and suspenseful as the Stasi agent begins to cover up his subject's dissident activity and thus silently conspires with him. The ending is very sad and sweet and powerful. I know sweet seems like the wrong word for a movie about the brutality of a fascist regime, but the face of the actor who played the Stasi agent... it is the final shot where years later he is buying a book by the writer that is dedicated to him, and he realizes that all his risks, and the consequences he suffered, were recognized and helped. In that last shot, his face looks... innocent. That's why it was "sweet", there was some consolation.